The Hoffman Quadrinity Process — learn to put yourself first

As women, we regularly consider our emotional needs to be last on our list of priorities
— if they’re even on the list at all! And we find many logical, rational-sounding
explanations for why this has to be the case. “If I didn’t have to work
so much," we say, or “If only my children weren't sick," or “I can’t
right now because my parents need my help." Whatever the excuse, we often put our
own emotional needs to the side to plow through and get “our work" done. But
as the demands pile on and time for reflection and renewal dwindles, many women
suffer not only emotionally, but physically.

One method that we often suggest to women seeking a way to address emotional issues
is the Hoffman Quadrinity Process. It can transform the lives of women who are “stuck"
on emotional issues. This program helps people integrate the four essential aspects
of their being: emotions, intellect, spirit, and physical body. A 2006 study done
at the University of California Davis has found that participants in the Hoffman
Process have done as well or better than those using other interventions in significantly
reducing depression, anxiety, interpersonal sensitivity, or obsessive-compulsive
symptoms, especially in the long term. This study also found significant, lasting
increases in emotional intelligence, forgiveness, spirituality, energy, and vitality.

We asked the Hoffman Institute's President, Raz Ingrasci, to summarize what the
Process teaches so that women can get a better idea of what it offers for better
emotional health.

What you do is influenced by how you feel

The old saw that “actions speak louder than words" is very true, but it’s
only half the equation. Our actions are mostly guided by how we feel — in
other words, though actions might be loudest, emotions always speak first, and they
guide our actions far more than our intellect. Indeed, the emotional brain reacts
at lightning speed compared to the intellectual brain. Raz suggests that we think
back to the last time we felt humiliated, upset, angry, or insulted. “It takes
only a millisecond," he says, “to put us into a state of paralysis. We’re
reeling, trying to come up with words to use in conversation, but we’re struck
dumb." And it’s minutes or even hours before we can articulate that feeling
to someone else or even ourselves.

From the experience with 70,000+ who have attended the Hoffman Process, Raz estimates
that about 80% of human behavior stems from our emotional brains, which can confuse
us when we react in ways that we know, intellectually, are counterproductive. Raz
suggests that one way around this dilemma is to learn to identify our emotions more
readily. As he explains, “The naming of an emotion takes place in the intellectual
brain, though the feeling itself exists in the emotional brain. When it is named,
those two spheres are connected and you feel more whole."

A negative pattern is...

...a reaction that is:

compulsive

emotionally charged

automatic

...and

learned

As humans, it’s our great fortune that any negative patterns we are capable
of learning, once we become aware of them, we are also capable of unlearning.

When we recognize the power of our emotions and give them due regard, our lives
can improve dramatically. As Raz says, “There’s an old axiom, ’What
you can feel, you can heal.’ The best way to begin dealing with an unwanted
emotion is to allow yourself to experience it." Burying our emotions only means
they will arise again at another time in different circumstances, but always inconveniently.
To tap into the power of emotions, Raz suggests, “the best strategy is to
become aware of your feelings and move with them, allowing your body to experience
your sensations and emotions." This is how we work through problems and eventually
heal. If your emotional states are overpowering or frightening to you or others,
seek professional help.

Negative love and our family patterns

Once we can name our feelings, the next step is to figure out where they originated;
where did I learn that feeling? We tend to reproduce the behaviors we learned from
our parents as a way of earning their approval, attention, and love. Bob Hoffman,
creator of the Hoffman Process, called this the Negative Love Syndrome because these
behaviors are rooted in the experience of not getting enough love.

These behavior patterns play out in our adult lives as well. Many of us end up seeking
relationships that are similar to what we saw in our parents because this is how
we learned about love. How often have you, or one of your friends, lamented not
only that you “married your father" but that you’re “becoming
your mother"? There are good reasons why they (or you) might feel an echo of your
parents in your own behavior — your parents were the people who formed your
perception of how an adult behaves and what adult relationships should look like.
And they, in turn, were formed by their own parents. These patterns and perceptions,
whether positive or negative, can continue from generation to generation virtually
unexamined.

Here is a list of statements that you can review to see if
the Quadrinity Process is for you:

I feel that something is holding me back and want to take the limits off.

I experience too much stress, and I’m not having enough fun.

I know what I should do, but often can’t generate the will to do it.

I often feel angry, resentful, embarrassed or depressed.

I flip flop between dominating and intimidating people below me and avoid being
dominated by people above me,

I feel intimidated, coerced, and manipulated and can’t stand up for myself.

I work compulsively, often to the detriment of other aspects of my life.

Meaning is going out of my marriage, my career, or life in general. I often feel
I’m just going through the motions.

There’s a lack of intimacy in my life — I’ve been unsuccessful
in creating relationships.

I’m either unemotional and disconnected from my feelings or my feelings are
running me.

I’m in recovery from substance abuse (clean and sober for 90 days minimum)
and want to deal with the original pain that led to addiction.

I recognize that my parents were not as loving and supportive as I wanted them to
be, or that bad things happened in my childhood.

I see myself passing my own suffering on to my children.

The Hoffman Process is focused on helping you to be your true self, not the “mask"
you create to meet your parents’ and society’s expectations. In order
to find our authentic selves, we have to examine where our emotions and motivations
stem from.

Our childhood influences our adult relationships

As children, we learn from our parents and caregivers. When a child has a negative
experience with a parent, he or she typically assumes the blame for it. If a parent
ignores, dismisses, or rejects a child—whether because the parent was preoccupied
with work, or didn’t know how to address their feelings, or simply was out
of sorts that day—the child assumes he or she was somehow “bad" or unworthy
of love. This childhood feeling of being unlovable becomes an internal state and
persists into adulthood. This is the underlying source the negative love syndrome.

The responses we develop as children to try to elicit the love we needed from our
parents often imitate the very behaviors that made us feel so unworthy. As Bob Hoffman
noted, “our unconscious reasons for adopting negative behavior patterns from
our parents are:

the hope that they will love us if we are like them.

to vindictively punish our parents by reflecting their negativity back to them.

We may feel disheartened when we realize just how young we started learning our
negative emotions and behavior patterns, but we can take comfort in the fact that
these are learned behaviors, which we can transform with time and practice. As children
we had no choice, but as adults we can choose to heal. This is the goal of the Hoffman
Process for emotional healing.

“From a human doing to a human being"

Most of us simply react or do as we’ve been shown in any given situation.
In his book, The Hoffman
Process, Tim Laurence talks about transitioning from a human doing
to a human being. The Hoffman Process helps to unwind this programmed behavior by
examining all parts of the self — emotions, intellect, spirit and body —
along with the patterns we have developed, so we can choose what to keep and what
to change, thereby empowering us to have a more free, open, loving, spontaneous
experience of life.

Though most of us have been conditioned otherwise, our emotional health deserves
a place on our “to-do lists," and it’s time we start paying attention.
Women deserve to take the time and space to reflect on the negative patterns you’ve
always imagined are simply a part of “who you are." The Hoffman Institute
has developed dozens of tools to help work through negative patterns and provide
positive alternatives.

If you’d like to learn more about tapping into the full range of your emotional
expression, visit the Hoffman Institute website.
The impressive results of the UC Davis research study on the Hoffman Process can
be found on their site as well.

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